The Kindle Fire HD Quick Settings Menu

You access both a short list of commonly used settings (Quick Settings) and all the more detailed settings for Kindle Fire HD by swiping downward from the top of the screen.

Here are the settings that you can control from the Quick Settings menu:

Unlocked/Locked: This is a toggle feature, meaning that you tap it to lock your device so that the screen won’t dim after a period of time, and tap it again to allow it to dim, which can save your battery power. Locked is a useful setting when you’re reading a book or watching a movie, for example.

Volume: Tap Volume to display a slider bar that you can use to increase (by sliding it to the right) or decrease (by sliding it to the left) the volume.

Brightness: You can tap and display the Automatic Brightness On/Off button to turn on or off a feature that controls the brightness of the screen based on ambient light. You can also use the slider above this setting to adjust the brightness manually.

Wireless: Tap to display the Airplane Mode On/Off button; with Airplane Mode set to On, no available networks appear. When you set Airplane Mode to Off, a list of available networks appears. Tap an available network to join it. Note that you may be asked to enter a password to access some networks.

Sync: Generally speaking, if you’re within range of a Wi-Fi network, when you begin to download content it downloads very quickly. However, if you’ve been out of range of a network, you might want to use this setting when you’re back in range of a network to manually initiate the download of new content or continue downloads that may have been interrupted.